Flakiness and Fudge

I am rubbish. I was trying to do Mumma Troll’s £1-per-person-per-day challenge and I forgot to cancel the veg box, which actually costs more than our allotted amount (£14), so I have failed to start with.

O when will the parsnips stop coming

However, having been initially utterly rubbish, I thought what I might do is try and cost individual meals and see if I can get our day’s expenditure down to only £2. I have to say, I find it very, very difficult – it is quite a challenge! And also because so much of what we eat seems to be leftovers and store cupboard items which I just kind of replenish when I think: i.e. I don’t go out and buy a week’s food in one go and then eat it, I operate more of a rolling programme. Anyway, yesterday was a wash out, but today I am doing a bit better (leftovers for lunch + dal) so I will take photos of dinner and then show you + recipe tomorrow. Also we did ok on Sunday when I started unofficially, but I find I can manage one meal but then lunch and breakfast is a challenge. It is not a challenge for Partner, who is happy to eat once a day like a grumpy camel, but I am a grazer and you would not believe how much snacks can add up to. Go and have a look at Mumma Troll’s blog to see someone do this challenge competently, I am full of admiration because honestly, it is not easy and I am starting to realise the reasons for my overdraft (not huge, don’t worry mum).

Coloured with turmeric, let us hope it does not turn me yellow

I cut up the soap and now it is curing. The soap bug, it has bitten me, and I have ordered more soapmaking oils from Fresholi. I have some useful information for all you soapmakers/ potential soapmakers out there: you can buy lye (caustic soda) in Homebase. It costs £2.49 and I think it is worth buying from there rather than online (because I don’t think Fresholi sell it and I didn’t want to have to do two separate orders), because you save on the shipping costs. Also, you can give the person on the Homebase checkout a thrilling moment when they wonder if you are perchance running a meth lab. I look as likely to run a meth lab as I do to run a marathon or a FTSE 100 company, so I did not have any trouble, but if you feel you might have the air of a criminal mastermind, you might want to take a loveable toddler or a vicar in with you to smooth your passage, so to speak. You can also clean drains with it, but if you ever watched How Clean Is Your House, Kim used to sort out the kind of people who normally turn up on Hoarders, with all their family crying and a lot of therapists looking at them sadly, with only half a lemon and a pair of old knickers as a duster. What would Kim say to people who need caustic soda to clean their drains? She’d say, get your lemon out, love, and use that caustic soda for something more interesting! (Not crystal meth. Kim wouldn’t approve of crystal meth).

How many calories I wonder

I also made fudge. This is my patented avoiding-buying-a-smaller-tin technique which works for anything that is reasonably solid. Scrunch that foil up and make it the correct size! I do not like to boast but this fudge is possibly the most delicious fudge I have ever eaten, it is even better than the fudge I made previously of which my brother Dan ate a slab without cutting it up. It is better than that. Entirely coincidentally, I have been and weighed myself at Boots and let the machine measure my body fat, and so, having discovered I am essentially the same as those monsters on Dr Who, I have had to freeze the fudge. It is very sad.

I didn’t freeze all of it, though. {Wanders thoughtfully in direction of fridge}.